The Best is Yet to Come...

So a lot has happened in the last two weeks. Let me catch you up on our life. We left off at Amos' birthday party.

The next day was a big one for us as Jason preached at our church! The week hadn't left much time to for him to prepare as we had a bunch of house stuff come up and getting ready for Amos' party on Saturday. The Lord was faithful, as always, and used Jason to share His word with our church! It was wonderful!

After that, we sent the boys off with Nana and Papa and got ready ourselves to head on our mini-vacation to South Dakota. Because Jason hadn't got to go with us to California, we decided to do a mini-vacation together and he chose South Dakota. I think he knew that the only place he was going to get me to hike in the summer was somewhere cooler! We stayed at a B&B in the Blackhills, had wonderful food, and made it over to the Badlands.

Check out our fun! I think I took more pictures of just Jason and me than I have since having children.

Our hike to the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Great Pyrenees - Harney Peak.

Jason collected rocks for the boys along the way!

The hike was so picturesque. Every time you turned you saw a different landscape.

We're almost to the top! Our exhausted face pictures.

That night we headed into a little town to enjoy the highest rated restaurant there. Their menu consisted of the filet mignon wrapped in bacon and that was it! Here's Jason enjoying dessert. He gave me the option of walking around for a little bit or having dessert. When I chose dessert he commented how much loves when I'm pregnant. He has more icecream in his life.

The next morning we got to head east to the Badlands. It's crazy to be driving along farming fields and then come to this:

Baby #3 was at the Badlands.

Jason doing a little more extreme exploring than this pregnant lady was prepared to do.

That night we dined at an Indian restaurant in Rapid City! It was sooo wonderful. It made me wish that we had something like this in Joplin. Jason asked if they wanted to relocate. Then we enjoyed a little of their downtown life with more ice cream.

Jason had been dealing with a cold the whole trip, that night he woke up coughing and couldn't go back to sleep. Eventually I woke too and we decided to hit the road early - at 4:30 to be exact. But that meant that after 15 hours on the road, we made it back to Lebanon in time to see the boys before they went to bed! What a sweet reunion.

The next day brought a whole new adventure.. When we had left on vacation, things with our house selling seemed to be at a bit of a standstill and we feared we may be pushing the closing back even later. However, Friday morning we got the good call from our realtor that, in fact, they wanted to move the closing date up, to the following Friday. That meant we had to pack up the house and move out in 7 days. I was torn between excitement and stress. Jason thought it would be an adventure. I don't think he has the same feelings now, 7 days later.

We were blessed with such wonderful help! Not to mention three different places to store all our stuff. Jason couldn't believe how much we had. I must do a good job of storing it. After lots of packing, countless loads, hours of cleaning, and a few last minute repairs, we were officially out of our home by 10:00 pm Thursday!

And here's the best news: we are homeless! Ha ha! But it's true. It never felt like it was really going to happen until this morning at 10 a.m. when we signed the last paper. Don't worry, we aren't living on the street. We have another house under contract, and are living with my parents until that all finalizes.

We did squeeze in some fun time with the boys on Thursday. They have been such troopers. After being gone for a week on our mini-vacation, and then having different people watch them so we could get packed up, we could tell that they were feeling a bit unsettled too! So we made Thursday our fun day and had Panera for breakfast, jumped to our hearts content at the House of Bounce, then went to Chick-fi-la for lunch.

They took good naps that afternoon. Then we said goodbye to our house. It was definitely bittersweet, just thinking about bringing them both home from the hospital here, and all the wonderful memories that followed. Silas just started calling this place home. But we are very excited for a new house with lots more room and all the memories to come.

The best is yet to come!

This was such a fun birthday! Unlike his first and second birthdays, Amos has been talking about it for a few weeks and looking forward to what he was going to do and who he was celebrating with. He even had specific food and present requests. In fact, the lucky boy got to celebrate twice. With how the 5th fell this year, we decided to postpone his party until the 12th so that more friends could come. But that didn't stop us from celebrating as a family on the actual date.

He woke up to balloons and really wasn't too sure what that was all about.

He quickly found the presents and thought it was time to open them up too!

Later, Nana and Papa and Grammy and Gramps surprised by coming for the birthday dinner and bringing presents. What could be better than having both sets of grandparents (almost) all to yourself.

It didn't take him long to want to try out all his new stuff.

Per request, we had pizza and macaroni and cheese for dinner. Followed by cake and homemade icecream.

But that wasn't the end of our celebrating. After waiting a whole long week, we celebrated all over again. Amos was OK with that. Although he was a little disappointed when he found out he wasn't turning four at this party, he had to wait the entire year.

If you've been around Amos much, you know his bike is one of his favorite things. May have something to do with how much Dad likes bikes, but it made it easy to come up with an idea for his party. We invited all his friends over for a bike race.

Here they are energizing up!